Many people look forward to Halloween for multiple reasons; Candy, costumes, scary movies, the list goes on for what makes Halloween great. However, this year, some people had something new to be excited for. On Halloween 2019, Nintendo released Luigi’s Mansion 3, the third game in the Luigi’s Mansion series.

Despite what the title implies, and straying away slightly from the theme of the previous two games in the series, Luigi’s Mansion 3 does not take place in a mansion at all. Instead, it takes place at the Last Resort Hotel, owned and operated by the mysterious Hellen Gravely, who is quickly revealed to be (surprise!) a ghost, inviting Luigi and company to her hotel to capture them, and in the process, please the main villain of the series, King Boo. After narrowly avoiding getting trapped in a painting, it’s Luigi’s job to save his friends, and catch some ghosts in the process.

One major thing I was happy to see was the return of portrait ghosts, or “boss ghosts” as they’re called in this game. For those unfamiliar, the portrait ghosts were a type of ghost in the original Luigi’s Mansion with more unique theming than the regular ones and were also usually harder to catch. In the second game in the series, any type of portrait ghost was completely not present, which was my main complaint about that game. Other than the ghost dog Polterpup (Who makes a return in Luigi’s Mansion 3, which I personally was very happy about), practically every new character in that game was extremely forgettable. I wouldn’t call it a terrible game, but it was definitely weaker than the original game in the series. However, some brand new boss ghosts made their debut in Luigi’s Mansion 3, and, this may be a bit of a controversial opinion, but I would dare say they’re better than the ones in the first game. While some of the portrait ghosts in the first game were a bit forgettable or boring, I can remember clearly all of the ghosts I encountered in Luigi’s Mansion 3, whether I liked them or not.

I’ve always been more of a fan of Luigi than his more iconic brother Mario, so, at least for me, it’s always a delight to see him in the spotlight. However, Luigi isn’t the only playable character in Luigi’s Mansion 3. Introducing Gooigi, a clone of sorts that helps Luigi on his adventures throughout the hotel, helping to solve puzzles and fight battles that Luigi could otherwise not complete himself. At first, I was worried that this mechanic would be way too much to get used to, but thankfully that wasn’t the case. I got used to the addition of Gooigi, among some other new mechanics littered throughout the game, pretty quickly.

Of course, this game isn’t perfect. I found that some of the boss fights were extremely confusing, and finding the boss’ weakness was harder than it needed to be. A pretty good example of this would be the fight with King MacFrights, the sixth boss in the game. Once I figured out what his weakness was, the rest of the fight was fairly easy, but actually figuring out what his weakness was in the first place was what took so long. Once I did figure it out, though, I did feel a bit silly for not putting the pieces together sooner, but still, I found this fight to be very confusing at the beginning, which was the case with a lot more of the bosses too. As well as the difficult bosses, I also encountered a few weird glitches while playing as well, but thankfully none of them were gamebreaking, just odd to look at.

Overall, though, this game was an absolutely fantastic addition to the Luigi’s Mansion series. I’d highly recommend this game to anyone who’s interested in a fun, not-so-scary spooky game, or just fans of Nintendo games in general. Luigi’s Mansion 3 is available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.